Interrogation
by Jacqueline Swart
Summary: With a story so unbelievable that I sometimes doubt the truth of it myself, the only way out is to lie, lie, and lie again. But I soon found out that, when it is Special Agent Gibbs on the other side of the interrogation table, resistance is futile! Rated T, as it IS NCIS and the subject is murder. Reviews would be much appreciated, as this is my first fanfiction.
1. Chapter 1 - Caught

I was tired.

Oh, boy, I was tired.

Tired of hiding. Tired of watching over my shoulder. Tired of waking several times a night with my body as stiff as a board and holding my breath in fear. Tired of sneaking in and out of a house that wasn't mine. Tired of keeping the blinds closed and the doors locked and eating junk food in the dark. Tired of the suffocating feeling in my chest. And tired, oh so tired, of being alone with all this trouble.

Thus, when I returned from the coffee shop that morning and found the two LEO's, knocking on the front door and shouting: "NCIS, open up!" I nearly surrendered. At least they didn't want to kill me. Arrest me, yes. Charge me with murder, yes. Interrogate and shout at me, probably, yes. But they won't kill me, and maybe they could make sense out of this horrible mess I found myself in.

I didn't think about surrender for long, though. I don't know whether it was the more rational or the more scared part of my brain that took over, but as the man and woman turned around, the desperation of the past six days drove all thoughts of it from my mind. The simple fact was that they would never believe my story. Heck, I sometimes doubted the truth of it myself. So when our eyes met over the length of the driveway, I just saw the years of prison stretching before me, and without a second thought I took off like a hare before a pack of dogs.

The two agents at the door shouted something, and another – somewhat plump – young man jumped from behind a parked car and threw himself at me. Smashing my forearm into his ribs, I ducked under his arm and streaked down the street.

Gardens, hedges and cars flashed past me in a blur. I turned a corner, narrowly missing two old ladies pushing a pram, and ducked into a narrow lane between the houses. The neighbourhood was quite strange to me, but I knew that there were woods somewhere ahead of me. In the woods I may be able to make good my escape, for no city kid would ever catch me there.

One of the agents, a well-dressed guy who now was mud-spattered and looked out of breath and pissed, appeared at the bottom end of the lane, cutting off my escape route and forcing me to stop short. From behind, another agent, a pretty, dark-haired young woman, came bearing down on me with long strides. What she apparently lacked in length and strength, she more than made up for in her expression of deadly determination, and it took me all of three seconds, looking frantically from one to the other, to realize that I was not going to get past either of them.

So I took my only other option: the wall.

For one horrifying moment my foot got stuck in the top of the picket fence, but then I was over and away over the backyards, scrambling as fast as I could over fences and bushes and through flower beddings and rubbish heaps. The agents had gained on me in the lane, and I could hear the man swearing periodically behind me. It was no fun trying to run full speed while constantly tripping over other people's rubbish, and I felt a weird sense of comradeship with the guy. I would have sworn, too, had I any breathe to spare.

It was a relief when, finally, as I leaped yet another fence, my boots connected with wild grass and I saw trees ahead. I was through the neighbourhood and almost in the woods.

Twenty yards, three breaths, one last push, and I'll have the advantage.

It was then, with freedom so near, that an abrupt halt was brought to my escape.

Out of nowhere, two arms closed around my legs and we smashed to the ground, the owner of the arms on top of me.

Now, I grew up on a cattle farm in a rough-and-tumble family with an ex-Marine as a dad. The youngest of five brothers, I've had more than my share of been tackled, kicked and trampled on. Cattle have pushed me and horses have kicked me. Numerous things had fallen on me, like the roof of a cave and a stone wall. But never, in all my life, did anybody or anything fall as hard on me as that man did.

It wasn't that he was that heavy. He was just as hard and unyielding as a slab of steel, and as he crashed me to the ground, he knocked every bit of breath, resistance and also some blood out of me.

For a couple of seconds, the world was playing merry-go-round and my ears sang like the dickens.

I was faintly aware that the man had his knee on my back and was unhurriedly strapping handcuffs to my wrists. A mop of white hair floated by at the outer range of my vision as he felt around my waist for weapons. Then, as the other three agents climbed over the last fence and came walking up, he pulled me to my feet and quickly finished patting me down.

I stood swaying. My head was spinning, and my chest and back hurt like hell. Blood poured from my nose, over my mouth, soaking my T-shirt.

"I should have surrendered," I mumbled, mostly to myself.

A soft, "yeah," floated past my right ear, quietly sarcastic.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Waiting Game

_Dear readers_

 _Just wanted to let you know that, even though real life forced me to take a break for a while, I am still planning on finishing this story._ _I updated this second chapter and is currently reworking the third, also. In my humble opinion, this second chapter is much better than the previous one, I really enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoy reading it, too!_

* * *

I have had six days to come up with a story, six days to think up a way in which to explain the facts without making me look the guilty bastard I apparently was. But now that it has come down to it, I had nothing. Nada. Zilch. Only a couple of half-baked lies with more holes in it than a Swiss cheese, and the utter conviction that the truth will land me in jail for the rest of my life.

Damn it.

I rested my head on the table, twisting it side to side to get rid of the stiffness in my neck. Something clicked into place in my spine. It felt good. A tiny comfort in a very uncomfortable situation.

The interrogation room was cold and grey and bare. Half of one wall was covered with a mirror, which was, of course, one-way. Someone – or more than one someone – was undoubtedly gawking at me from the other side, and I had a strong urge to stick out my tongue and cross my eyes.

I didn't.

My situation was shitty enough already.

The agents would probably be back from Steve's flat by now. There really was nothing of interest for them there; Steve was a Marine, and a law-abiding type of guy, who would probably kick my ass if he knew I used his flat to hide from the Law while he was deployed. As for me, I carried nothing in there but a week's worth of takeaway boxes and the clothes on my back.

So they would be typing. Making calls. Chatting over how best to break me. Staring at me from behind the mirror. Stalling, drinking coffee, making me nervous.

I cracked my neck again.

Waiting was not my strong suit.

The room was remarkably clean. Not a cobweb or a dust bunny in sight and the table sparkled. I wondered if there were chewing gum under the seat. Probably not. Not under this one, anyway. It is kind of hard to get your hands under the seat with the cuffs on. Or to your mouth, for that matter.

A numbness tracked down from my shoulders through my arms to my fifth finger on each side. The cuffs were too tight. The nerves in my shoulders were pinching and the circulation in my hands were going down. I flexed my fingers slowly. It hurt my wrists. I stopped.

Moving my head hurt, too. So did breathing. The exertion of the chase has made all my week-old injuries come alive again, especially in my ribs. I think a couple of them were cracked. And if they weren't before the chase, they definitely were after the tackle.

Boy, I was exhausted.

I rested my head on the table again. There was a new bruise forming over the old one right in die middle of my forehead. The pressure on it hurt. I didn't care. Everything hurt.

Maybe they were not talking about how to break me at all. Or staring at me from behind the glass. Maybe they had all the evidence they needed. Maybe they were just waiting for a warrant. Or a witness.

A witness.

Somebody who saw me leaving the house that night. Somebody who saw me throwing up in the rubbish bin in the park. Somebody who remember a big young man in a bloodied T-shirt sitting in the corner of the bus, shivering. Or, perhaps, somebody who was in the house that night.

Because somebody else _was_ in the house that night.

Even though I didn't see anybody, didn't hear anybody, there must have been someone. Something was nagging around at the edges of my memories, something that I can't quite pull out of the confused jumble of thoughts. I think there was someone. Hell, there _must_ have been someone, because if there weren't, I really was guilty. Guilty as hell.

I banged my head softly against the table a couple of times and sat up again.

Waiting really was not my strong suit.

The mirror showed dark circles under my eyes, exhausted wrinkles around the corners. The bridge of my nose was red and swollen. On my jaw and cheek bones, new bruises were forming over the old ones, colouring my face blue and yellow and green, making it look distorted. And the week old beard did not do much to hide it.

It didn't hide my expression, either. Knotted jaw-muscles, clamped mouth, drooping eyelids, eyebrows pulling together. I looked uncooperative. Unfriendly. Stubborn.

It was an unfortunate expression, but I couldn't help it. I just wasn't created to look friendly. I couldn't change that expression, even if I tried.

Damn it.

I cracked my neck a third time.

The waiting was killing me.


	3. Chapter 3 - Interrogation

Agent Gibbs came strolling into the room in an eerie silence. There was no click of the door as he entered, no sound of his footsteps as he approached, and no rustling of his clothes as he sat down on the table next to me, too close for comfort, and sipped coffee while turning pages in a small folder. From someone his length, and strength enough to flatten me with next to no effort, the quietness was unnerving.

I sat stiffly upright and looked straight ahead into the mirror, but I could study his face out of the corner of my eye. There were lines around his eyes and mouth, lines that told of hard years of fighting. Grey hair were cut short at the bottom, but longer on the top and fell loosely over his forehead. His jaw set in a somewhat grim manner. His eyebrows pulled slightly together, and although I could not see his eyes, I remembered the way his agents responded to his glare.

As the silence dragged on, I cursed the powers that worked together to make this man come here to ask me the truth. Would nothing ever go in my favour again? To someone else, I could maybe have explained. But not to him. To him, I could not tell a story that sounded like rubbish from the get-go, even if it was the truth. That I knew without a doubt.

After several seconds of silence, the agent pulled something from the folder, dropped it on the table, and pushed it in front of me. He did not speak, but leaned slightly forward, and waited.

It was a head-and-shoulders shot of that bastard Roy Miller, probably a driver's license photo. It smirked at me in a way that made me want to punch his face in all over again. And I am afraid it showed, for when I glanced up, agent Gibbs looked back at me with faint irony in his gaze.

He tilted his head slightly and pulled another picture from the folder, which he again dropped before me and waited for my reaction. This time it was a full body shot, and I recognized the setting. I had seen this very same image in my nightmares every night since that fateful evening. The body laid exactly as I remembered: upper body slumped against the wall and eyes staring unseeingly ahead. But the blood … I had left before that much has spilled.

An icy cold shiver ran up my spine, making my nostrils flare. I met the agent's eyes, just barely, and saw the question. What the question was, I wasn't exactly sure, but it was a question nevertheless, and I tried to formulate an answer. Something that would not give away anything, but that would take the blue eyes off me, even if just for a second, so that I could compose myself.

But nothing stood out as sensible from the jumble of thoughts in my mind, and so I settled for a question.

"What happened?"

He countered without hesitation.

"You tell me."

I shook my head, once, twice, and turned my face away. Away from the mirror, away from the picture, away from the unfailing gaze.

I stumbled over the words.

"I – I saw him last Tuesday. He was still alive then."

"When you arrived … or when you left?"

The accusation hang in the air, heavy, full of scorn.

My eyes jumped back to his, and our gaze locked. There was no give in him, no pity. He suspected me of a deed that disgusted him, and he was either going to force the truth out of me, or take me down hard. Or maybe both.

All the conviction of my soul sounded in my next sentence.

"I did not kill him, sir."

I knew it was not enough. It wasn't even enough to convince myself, certainly not the man sitting next to me. But it was all I was certain of in this whole bloody mess, and all I could say.

A dull throb started in my ears, and I barely heard the whispered question.

"Were you at his house last Tuesday?"

"No, sir -"

A sudden irritable movement of his head brought me to a stop, turned the tide of my thoughts.

"Yes. Yes, I was. I wanted to talk to him about – about his daughter. But nobody answered the door. I knocked; I called; I walked around the house and looked in at the window of his workroom. I couldn't see anybody. Not even Lisa. So I left."

"And the time was …?"

"I arrived around six, left about ten minutes after."

"And you never went inside."

"No, sir."

He threw his head back in a soundless, mocking little laugh that showed more clearly than any words ever could what utter rot he thought I was talking. And I was, mostly, but still I continued desperately.

"Believe me, sir. I cannot prove it very well, but maybe the boy next door could tell you when I left. He talked to me over the fence. And I got money from an ATM on my way home. Maybe it has a camera. You have to believe me, sir."

Somewhere, deep behind his eyes, something changed. There was a sudden stillness in his hands, a cool calculation in his eyes. Not positive, but searching, weighing, sorting.

"Boy next door?"

"Yes." It surprised me that that was the one thing he focused on. "The skinny one with the comb over."

He searched my face.

"There is no boy next door."

Something exploded in my brain, scattering thoughts far and wide. Of all the things I have doubted, the existence of the boy was not one of them.

Words tumbled from my mouth, confused.

"But there was one. I mean, I talked to him. He said my shirt looked like a piece of cow crap. I - I don't understand."

Blue eyes caught mine, intensely, as if he was trying to peer into my very soul. It was a horrible feeling, a kind of burning in my throat, and I couldn't stand it for long.

As I looked away, his hand dropped to the photos on the table. One by one he slipped them to the edge of the table top, picked them up, and placed them back into the folder. Then he move behind me, and I heard the soft 'trrrrt' sound as he unlocked the handcuffs. Blood came rushing back into my hands, and with it, pain.

Then he picked up his coffee cup and left, soundlessly, as he had come.


End file.
